Veterans' History

Wikipedia reg saunders. Kokoda Track. Location of the Kokoda Track within Papua New Guinea The Kokoda Trail or Track is a single-file foot thoroughfare that runs 96 kilometres (60 mi) overland — 60 kilometres (37 mi) in a straight line — through the Owen Stanley Range in Papua New Guinea.

The track was the location of the World War II battle between Japanese and Australian forces in 1942. Hot, humid days with intensely cold nights, torrential rainfall and the risk of endemic tropical diseases such as malaria make it a challenging trek. Hiking the trail normally takes between four and twelve days; the fastest recorded time is 16 hours 34 minutes. History[edit]
Australians Missing in Action in the Vietnam War. RAAF Museum. Entry[edit] Entry to the museum is free.

The operating hours are Tuesday to Friday 10am - 3pm, Weekends and Public Holidays 10am - 5pm. The museum is closed on Mondays, Christmas Day, and Good Friday. Aircraft on display[edit]
Reginald Saunders. Royal armouries museum. Parachute Regiment and Airborne Forces Museum. Coordinates:

Indigenous Australians in wartime: it's time to tell the whole story. Australia is finally telling the stories of the Indigenous soldiers who have served in our wars and conflicts.

This year’s Naidoc (National Aboriginal and Islanders Observance Day Committee) week, which began yesterday, is fittingly celebrating the theme “serving country – centenary and beyond”. It is heartening to see that Naidoc is taking a broad approach by honouring “all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men and women who have fought in defence of country ...
President Obama Awards the Medal of Honor to 24 Army Veterans. David Hudson March 18, 2014 06:57 PM EDT PrevNext President Obama awarded 24 Medals of Honor during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House, March 18, 2014.

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Search for HMAS Sydney and German auxiliary cruiser Kormoran. The memorial to HMAS Sydney at Geraldton, Western Australia.

The battle between Sydney and Kormoran took place off the Western Australian coast. Post-war searches attempted to find one or both of the combatants, but were unsuccessful because of a lack of detailed information about the battle's location. Searchers distrusted the German survivors and their accounts; the large difference between the number of survivors from each ship prompted theories that Kormoran's crew had acted illegally during the battle and were attempting to cover up their actions. As a result, hypotheses about the wrecks' locations varied from deep water many kilometres off Dirk Hartog Island, to sites nearer to Carnarvon, Western Australia, and as far south as the western side of the Houtman Abrolhos Islands.
HMAS Sydney II, Finding Sydney Foundation. Petty Officer makes history at Paris ceremony.

For the first time in history a member of the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) has actively participated in the Eternal Flame Ceremony, which is conducted every evening beneath the world-renowned Arc De Triomphe in Paris.

Petty Officer Don Blackley is in France as part of a small contingent of Australia’s Federation Guard, supporting commemoration activities marking the 70th anniversary of D-Day, the Allied landing on June 6, 1944, which marked the beginning of the end of the Nazi occupation of western Europe. “I was really proud and honoured when selected for this task. Originally, I was hoping for Anzac Day tasking, but when I found out I was going on this job, I felt very proud to be part of a massive international commemoration,” Petty Officer Blackley said.
Commandos buried in Papua New Guinea. Lance Corporal Spencer Walklate and Private Ronnie Eagleton were buried with military honours in front of their families and a guard of Special Forces soldiers.

The Z Special Unit patrol’s sole survivor, former Sapper Edgar ‘Mick’ Dennis, also attended. Members of an eight-man patrol sent to conduct a recon of Mauschu Island, Lance Corporal Walklate and Private Eagleton were thought to have drowned after trying to escape the island on logs. However, it was later discovered they were executed by the Japanese on nearby Kairiru Island after Army’s Unrecovered War Casualties unit found new evidence and located the bodies. Private Eagleton’s sister Carol Sadler remembered her younger brother as just a regular boy. “We lived in Sutherland, NSW, and he used to ride his bike a lot in the national park,” she said. “I think he would have really liked to have been a teacher. The family only discovered how Private Eagleton died in February this year.

Indigenous Australians in wartime: it's time to tell the whole story. National Vietnam Veterans Museum. Australian war cemeteries. Australian military museums. Kokoda Foundation - Home. Office of Australian War Graves. Office of Australian War Graves. Battle of Morotai. Coordinates: Background[edit]

National Vietnam Veterans Museum. Operation Wandering Souls is seeking your help! The Operation Wandering Souls project aims to return to Vietnamese families items that were ‘liberated’ from bodies or captured on the battlefield by Australian and New Zealand soldiers. Why? The Vietnamese people helped us find, identify and repatriate our six MIAs. Now it’s time to help them. We can do that by returning to Vietnamese families items that belonged to their loved ones that were captured on the battlefield or removed from bodies.The Geneva Conventions (Convention 1, articles 16 and 17) say we should.We’ve got these items. What can you do? We’re now asking Vietnam veterans who may have ‘liberated’ documents or other items from bodies, or collected items from the battlefield, and still have them, to consider returning them to Vietnam so that Vietnamese families can be reunited with items their loved ones once carried.

Why is this important?
Defence force abuse: millions of dollars in compensation paid to 117 victims. The Australian Defence Force (ADF) has paid more than $4.6m to more than 100 teenage victims of abuse at a training school for recruits, a major inquiry has revealed. The Defence Abuse Response Taskforce (Dart) – whose report was tabled on Wednesday by the defence minister, David Johnston – accepted as true allegations of abuse made by 207 former young recruits of HMAS Leeuwin at Fremantle, Western Australia.

The violent and serious abuse, which occurred throughout the training school’s history from 1960 until shortly before it closed in 1984 “was much more serious and widespread than has been previously acknowledged”, Dart’s chair, Len Roberts-Smith wrote in the report’s foreword.
Battle of Tarakan. Greater protection for ships lost in World War One. Australian Army during World War II. Operation Wandering Souls: putting the souls of soldiers to rest - ABC Canberra - Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Between 300,000 and 600,000 Vietnamese soldiers remain missing in action following what Vietnam calls 'The American War'.

Nearly 4000 are believed to have been killed in small battles against Australian and New Zealand troops. Dr Bob Hall is a former infantry officer and Vietnam veteran who is now a military historian at the University of New South Wales at ADFA. "In Vietnamese culture it's very important to find the remains of those who die, particularly those who die a violent death and whose gravesites are unknown," Dr Hall said.